Resident Hill
by Telaka
Summary: If you should go down the misty path today then you're sure of a big surprise... Silent Hill crossover.
1. Down the Misty Path

**Resident Hill**

**_A.N: Ahhh, talk about a work-in-progresses. This is the bastard-child of my inability to settle down with a solid project and his partner, my new obsession with certain games and their characters... A strong candidate for bullying then perhaps but I think I've been in this biz of ff writing long enough not to care very much. It may be carried on, in fact there is a strong chance it will carry on, but its uprearing could be slow, depends on how the parents get one. (I'm quite enjoying this spew of metaphors...) Anyway enjoy what's here if you chance to read it, and I'll try drop another chapter in the near future. Reviews are appreciated but not necessary for my motivation._**

**_Telaka_**

**_---------_**

I don't sympathise, but often feel a terrible and uncanny similarity to the mindless, irresistible urges of the infected, which drives them poor and relentlessly to living flesh. Only I have no nose for what they do. In fact, I've been informed that my sense of smell is failing at best. (Sometimes you have to laugh at yourself to get through the worst.) No, instead I have a tragic affair with the lost, and an incurable disease of my own which curses me to look for them. And look. And search until I can now count on half a hand how many times I myself have become the trapped and endangered one as a result of my explorations.

The sense of self-inflicted doom has become a common companion on my shoulder and I guess pretty soon that situations such as the one I'm in now will become my clique, my catchphrase something like '_Claire Redfield and the Impossible Situations._'

It's misty as I walk now, to a point of blind ridiculousness. If I stretch my arm out as far as it will go then my hand becomes a ghost, its outline a whitish grey shadow and its bulk just a bygone of my imagination. I can see the path and its safe tread for as far as about three steps then it too drops to a phantom, then nothing at all perhaps three more strides ahead of that.

So far the terrain is stable and natural; hard-packed muddy ground that cuts through long, unshaven grass and a spattering of trees. Birches. I only note the dominant breed of tree specifically because it is a favourite of mines. These ones in particular – perhaps because of the swarming fog – boast a handsome silvery hue to their bark, more prestigious than the usual beige white. As I continue to spot them through the cut-off landscape I use them as footholds for my conscious, an anchor of calm. If I did not focus on their simple, natural presence then I think I would have screamed and ran back a long way before.

I urge my cold feet into a constant rhythmic step along what must be a fairly simple downward path. As to current I've had to suffer no sensation of twisting and curling and tying up my instinctive compass, only the ease of going downhill along a steady southern dip. Though it is quiet and the landscape (or at least what I can make of it) quite natural, the air is hung with an insane tension. I feel (though I try to suppress it) all my instincts screaming Racoon City. Even behind my only allies, the Birch trees, I see fog flickering into bodies of reanimated dead. I spin and suddenly mutated dogs turn back into rocks. Schools of fallen leaves caught in the seasonal wind become swarms of disease carrying rats and it is all I can do to grip onto my map and march forward, as if I know what I am doing, as if I have some canny sense of purpose and direction.

The map. I found it on the ground at the other side of the bridge. Unusual, I suppose, but then I'm used to picking up first-aid kits and bullets and all assorts of weapons as they come unexplained in these types of situations. Maps and memos with unobvious relevancies and wisdoms only seem to come with the job of being a brother-seeking moron.

It has now quickly become a little bit of stability, just as the Birches, only no moaning corpses come hallucinating to life from behind the map every time I hold it under my nose, which is every few dozen steps at the least. As I hold it now to my side, so tightly I can feel it burying grooves into the bases of my fingers, I have to sedate the need to look at it only once more. I _know_ this path is about to lead me to a graveyard. It leads nowhere else, and how could it when all it seems to be capable of doing is leading down and straight south. The map has given me all the council I think it possibly can, except for that beyond the graveyard and beyond a little more path after that, it promises me what I am looking for: The town of Silent Hill.


	2. What Ado About Mystery Memos

**_A.N: Thanks for the reviews, always nice to see people excited by the idea of this kind of crossover, like I am lol. Still making it up blindly, but I suppose it will flicker between Claire's P.O.V and more traditional third person narrative (mainly to depict flashbacks). Anyway, enjoy this simple new chapter if it pleases ya._**

_Telaka_

----

So I decide to take stock in the graveyard; not exactly to add a spooky effect into my new adventure but because the fog seems to have given up a little of its lustre around the decrepit headstones and shabby, rusted iron fence perimeter. Of course there are parts of me – parts which are not by my nature but rather by horrifying personal experience – that say to sit in the middle of a graveyard in the middle of a strange nowhere is like some form of unwitting suicide. But a more predominant part of me is tired and eager to sit down. The woody path to Silent Hill is long, and uneventful…

In my knapsack – amongst less exciting things – are water, chocolate, the fading remains of a day-old tuna sandwich, some crudely fashioned lock picks, a breast pocket flashlight, a change of shirt and underwear, limited ammo for my 9mm – which is nestled snugly at the base of my spine – and a one anonymous diary. Any self-proclaimed Sherlock Holmes could deduct, I'm sure, that this is no random 'adventure', and I, no longer, a pure amateur.

Perching on an unassuming boulder next to a toppled tombstone of indistinguishable maturity, I begin indeed to take stock. Most frustratingly I note the change in my pocket is wearing thin, and with the chaos of the past month I have hardly had time to nip home and grab my purse. Here is hoping that the folks of Silent Hill take kindly in one way or another to wanderers with pretty legs.

I drink a little of the stale water from a bottle and cautiously entertain the idea of pulling out the anonymous diary that unofficially became mines just a few weeks back. In one of the many ways there could be to describe it, the anonymous diary has become my new nemesis.

It became mine in the days that followed off the back of the Racoon City 'adventure' and ever since it has troubled, sickened and propelled me into a whole new crazy level of the 'search-and-find-missing-relatives' field of expertise. Laying to me in barely coherent format a new trail to follow, with the vague and uninsured inkling of clues and tit-bits pointing roughly to where the hell Chris might be. And what exactly happened in doomed, burnt out Racoon, _why_ it happened…

I brush the little hand-tied booklet with an unconscious flicker of my fingertips, hardly aware of dragging it out from the bottom of my knapsack in the first place. It is in essence a form of crudely collected mismatch papers, newsprint cut outs, foggy photographs and computer print-offs, all bound with piss colour string. Though it radiates an uncomfortable foreboding, as I stare absently at it on my lap I notice again its childlike quality, ingrained in its handcrafted construction. I cannot shake the disturbing instinct which identifies this as a child's work.

Half of its contents appear as nothing better than a mystery, if I really concentrate on them. The awkward handwriting, as it shows up randomly on stapled post-its and crumpled A4 sheets of line and such, often trails off in mid-thought. Scrawls like '_The creepy crawlies are the only clue he gives…' _sound like and end like the norm amongst the little world of these pages. All I can tell for certain is that they speak of Silent Hill, of a town with a dead spirit. The only reason why I am following it is because of its unconfirmed linked with Racoon. Leon thought I was mad, deluded by fatigue and frustration, but—

There is a sound to one corner of the graveyard and everything in me freezes, including my thoughts. Memories that were about to surface, of long, stressful discussions around campfires, come to nothing as I half rise on my knees, my hand creeping back towards the 9mm.

A grunt. Like something inhaling through its nose, hungrily. '_Zombie dogs.'_

I shake my head, knowing I'm deluding myself, that I became half insane during my rampage through Racoon and now paranoia has settled in to my personality and there's hardly a noise I don't raise my hackles at anymore. Leon's snoring on the desert floor was no exception.

There are no zombies in Silent Hill, and none on the way to it. There are no zombies anywhere. Racoon became another crater of America, I still doubt that even dust survived Umbrella's 'prevention-of-spread' provocative. It makes me sick to think I nearly didn't.

Another grunt. It seems likely there could be wild hogs spreading in a place like this, or even wildcats and wolves. Nothing a bit of stamping about in my size eights wouldn't fix. Or a single shot into the nondescript sky from the 9mm. I pull it out from the ass of my jeans just in case.

Straightening out my legs I begin to take a little walk around the headstones, most of them defeated to the ground, drowning in straggly weeds or dry, dead mud. Its point-blank middle of the day but the attitude in the air suggests its night; lifeless, silent, deserted. Apart from the grunting. Another groggy snort drudges through the fog and I spin 90degrees to the left, to where a gate lies open, a gate I had known to be shut before I sat down to take stock fifteen minutes ago.

The graveyard is small and square and sloped. Before, it was also empty, save my presence. Now I begin to see thick plumes of fog turn to shapely shadows from behind mounds of stone and those shadows flicker into low, hulking figures. '_Zombie hogs_' I nearly suggest out loud but I keep it to my mind. A part of me wants to scream because I can no longer tell if I'm just seeing things, or if I'm surrounded by native wildlife, or if I'm really being rounded up by something altogether unnatural. I'm a walking wreak after Racoon, unfit to be outside and functioning, but I'm also looking for Chris and so I do the only thing that sensibly answers to any possibility; I run. I run for the open gate and out of the graveyard. I run with powerful kicks from the balls of my feet back to the path that's to lead me to Silent Hill, back into the thick membrane of the fog, back into a trail unknown. Kept together by one thing alone; finding Chris.


	3. America's Nastiest Highway Pt1

_**A.N: I'm enjoying playing about with these flashback scenes. There will be more to come, I'm sure. Gives me a break from writing in the far more challenging first-person as well lol. And it's a relatively appropriate way of giving some explanation behind why Claire's even in Silent Hill to begin with. Okay probably not so much here in this chapter, but it will, later.**_

_**Telaka**_

_----_

_The end of week one perhaps, or even the middle of week two._ _It hardly seemed to matter anymore. The best way to tell time now apparently was not to count sun downs, but instead blisters and dizzy spells._

_They might have escaped the city, but now they had America_'_s desert highway to contend with._

"_They've probably closed the road," Leon_ _commented for – Claire guessed – the hundredth time. It might have been irritating but she could forgive him as he struggled on with Sherry saddled to his back, her short legs dangling comfortably from the crooks of his filthy elbows._

_Night was close on their heels and would overtake them in an hour or so, probably less in fact, and though they sweltered together now, by the time the sun finally swooned and the moon caught its place they would be begging for their campfire to start, which it _usually _did…_

_Claire estimated that they dragged on the hoof for six or seven hours a day. The last two she usually managed purely by following Leon's dusty footprints as her head hung to her chest, stepping into them with a heavy, grudging gait of her own._

_Sherry walked more than her fair part, a small girl with a rare, newfound maturity that gave her better things to do than whine for the impossible. Sometimes she skipped and leapfrogged across invisible logs and boulders and it made Claire smile fondly for her. Other times she made a game of it: They were a family lost in a forgotten land after their plane had crashed in the Bermuda Triangle: They were a gang of siblings looking for their missing menagerie of pets, from beagles and budgies to lions and elephants. Her favourite in fact was a flying squirrel that she'd probably spent hours by now chasing, with her arms raised in the effect of trying to catch him out of midair. His name was Monty._

_Sherry had a very child-like tendency to stray, but then there was very little to stray away to, the landscape an endless, disappointingly empty spread of rusty red, and Claire and Leon were never more alert than when Sherry wasn't in direct alignment with them._

_When she wasn't being amused by Sherry's play though, or listening to Leon babble sweet nonsense to keep a sense of life flowing between them, Claire could feel the edges of insanity creep dangerously close to her relatively quiet surface. It came with different uprisings of emotion, the most alarming with a sense of rage that clogged her throat and made boiling tears tip over her cheeks. She kept it all till dark, when she could be certain of Sherry's gentle wheezing and Leon's light snoring, but some nights he heard, or he saw when she was engulfed in her own fitful sleep, and he felt nothing but an identical understanding, and a great, painful sympathy._

_Once, and only once, she had snapped in the daylight, after stubbing her toe on an otherwise unassuming rock. Exhausted from four and a half hours of exceptionally uneventful walking, where even Sherry had lost the lustre of her playful imagination, Claire had gone down on her face immediately, too dazed by the sun to begin with to summon her reflexes. It felt like her entire toe had broken in her boot. The whole of a desert highway to walk along and she had stepped directly into a rock no bigger than her fist._

_Though bleary-eyed himself, Leon had pivoted 180degrees on his heel instantly as he heard the soft, dry thud, and jogged back to help her. He might have said something to her as he'd offered his hand, a friendly, passing joke in a gentle manner, but Claire could not hear because the clog in her throat was pressing into her ears, her brain, throbbing through her system like something in her would physically explode at any moment._

_But instead it was her emotions._

_She'd slapped Leon's hand away, hardly aware of who he was, or that Sherry was right behind him, biting her lip nervously and clinging to his waist, or that she was scrambling in the dirt, looking for the accused rock, like a woman possessed._

_It caught against the skin of her knuckles before she was able to seize it with hollow triumph. Then she was on her feet, running hard but with an odd, half-hearted limp, springing 90degrees off their Westerly trail, pulling back her right arm with the rock clustered in her palm, burning her skin because it had been cooking in the merciless sun all day._

_Clumsily, with an unnaturally great lack of skill, she had tossed it, her entire shoulder lurching painfully with the sudden forward momentum, though she did not notice then. With a skip she'd stopped running and the rock disappeared into the fading skyline._

_Then Claire had dropped to her knees, unable to blame the rock anymore, simply overwhelmed by how unfair the past week had been. How cruel it was to have had her put through everything in Racoon City, watch and do things some people only had nightmares about – if they were unlucky – surviving a horror by the skin of her teeth, and come out of it to this, to nothing. No Chris. No sure way home. "Just this desert and its fucking rocks!"_

_Sherry had been scared – of what exactly she could not coherently word – but Leon_ _was encouraging and gentle and his soft sadness reached her as a little girl so he had managed to coax her over to the highly distressed college girl._

_For all of them it had been shit and Leon_ _could think of few better words for it, save a select bundle he would not even be caught dead saying around an 8-year-old. But he could almost forgive his own involvement that had started him in the whole mess of Racoon_ _City_ _to begin with. He had volunteered for the R.P.D, he had wanted to serve with them and his first day had been a matter of self-propelled nervous excitement. No matter Sherry's inheritance, she was just a small girl. And Claire was bound by a fierce, unyielding sibling bond. For _them _it was bad, he figured perhaps damaging beyond repair. _

_He was not yet ready to total the personal effects on himself._

_She never noticed them at first, casting long shadows over her curved spine as the day had grown old and weary. She had sobbed and swore, felt sick and vengeful. Then Leon_ _hunkered down to his knees and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Sherry came round to her other side and nestled herself in, and they had stayed like that till finally Sherry had fallen asleep and Leon and Claire went about starting a fresh fire, never to mention the incident again._

_Though they still did not speak of it, Claire mulled over it in her mind almost as endlessly as she thought of Chris. To consider herself textbook semi-insane, it was frightening in itself, enough to turn her mad altogether, with bitter irony._

"_Right kid-o, you know the drill."_

_There was a soft thud as Leon_ _dropped Sherry neatly to her feet. The little girl smiled shyly, nodding wordlessly._

_As it was, Sherry had a keen eye. Leon had watched her make skipping stones across the road into an art form, highly sensitive to what angles it would take to get them to skim as if they were travelling water. She seemed to have this same sensitivity when it came to sniffing out the useful things, like dry wheat grass and smooth edges rocks with dagger-like tips. If they ever did make it back to civilisation (and Leon_ _had his doubts, wanting them or not) then he would be sure to recommend her for whatever new police department he joined._

_So on his word she set off, only as far as she had been told she was allowed to perimeter and only ever under Leon and Claire's vice-like supervision, whether she was aware of it or not._

_The sun was beginning to dive, the sky now an acrid purple, which was oddly beautiful where the clouds still scattered out in long, fading crop lines. The air felt nice, though dry by habit; it was cooling on the skin but not yet chilly._

_Leon began testing ground with drags of his feet, like a dog looking to nest in grass, Claire often compared. Almost as a ritual, once dusk took the first corner Leon_ _would begin to walk in spirals and ovals, cuffing the dusty floor with his steel toecaps, sniffing at the unsettled sand. Claire never asked, because there was never need to. Whether Leon ever actually picked out any particularly special piece of ground was besides the point; once the fire was lit and they were fed and watered on their rations, Claire was out, dead to the world for the first half of the night. It was only after half a dozen or so hours of sleep that she would take over the watch from an almost comatosed Leon_ _and suffer through her emotions then._

_On this evening though things took on a twist that was to haunt and change their tragic destinies once again forever._

_Leon finally decided on their ground, a baked out piece of dead brown turf that looked as dead and brown as any other bit of ground he could have picked. He stopped as a sickly yellow coloured cloud of dust settled neatly around his ankles. Claire paused by his side, looking down with the drawn eyes of a battle-worn soldier; tired, dry, dead. She felt a reassuring palm cup around her shoulder, as Leon_ _watched Sherry in the not so distant horizon, already an elbow load of tumbleweed and mortally dry grass held tight to her side._

"_We'll get through this," he told her without looking down into her reserved gaze. "If we managed Racoon then we'll manage this."_

_And she did believe him, she just reckoned this was all plain unfair. _

_A small, humoured smile crawled onto her lips and he seemed to sense it because he looked down, appreciating it on her. She patted the heavy hand that rested on her shoulder with mutual reassurance. Ever since the 'rock incident' she was sure she had put doubt into Leon_'_s trust of her abilities. True though it was not, she felt determined to win that back. For the sake of being able to carry on calling him a friend._

"_Sure we will," she finally replied, her tone light and sensible, the smile still there, "and we'll wring the neck of the son-of-a-bitch who decided to close this road off without sending out patrols to check for son-of-a-guns like us."_

_Leon_ _barked a laugh, dropping his hand and shaking his head. "Of course," he grinned, "why not."_

_Then, looking back to the horizon they both felt their blood freeze, because Sherry was gone._


	4. Happy Burger

_**Yeah I'm not gonna narrate in the first person anymore. I tried this chapter like three times with Claire narrating and I couldn't get the same sense and mood that I managed with normal third person narrative. But hey, I did warn that this was a raw WIP that could chop and change to any degree at any moment ;)**_

_**Telaka**_

----

Claire made it out of the wooded trail and into Silent Hill almost entirely by accident.

Her mind had dragged her into a distraction of reminiscent woes, and whilst drifting in these mental matters she had suddenly found she wasn't on the same straight, downward south facing course the map had been telling her to follow. So it was in looking frantically for any sort of familiar landmark that she had coincidently tripped over a half-buried log and felt her balance betray her as she was dragged to the ground, rolling down a dug out scoop in the land, bouncing painfully over her limbs and torso until finally she grinded to a halt on hard, flat concrete.

For a long moment she simply lay on her stomach with her cheek rested on the ground, pinned partly by the stars dancing around the circumference of her vision and partly by humiliation. Then a slow reality dawned on the young Redfield and she forced herself up with a bounce. She had made it onto a road. Though faint and broken, Claire spotted the universal white lines that separated all roads' two halves through the persistent fog.

For a moment she was held, enigmatically, by their simple pattern, as she unconsciously made a check of her person to assure she still had her rucksack and gun, and in her shoulder pouch her knife.

Then she began to spot movement up ahead. She focused slowly on the close horizon, and just a moment later Claire found herself face to face with Hell.

It withered out of the density of the fog like a drowning figure surfacing from water, a mark of coal black against the milky air. Tall and tortured, it made heavy, slapping footsteps as it staggered towards her and then, when it clapped its sightless face on Claire, it screamed, piercing the unnatural silence with an altogether more abominable noise.

For just a second, stuck in a limbo of utter shock, Claire simply watched the—creature emerge towards her, without warning, as if it had come fresh from the pits of her very worst nightmare. It (she barely distinguished it as some sort of mutated human form) was armless and faceless, as if it had been bound with rags and then judging by its sickly sheen, painted in tar or oil. When it screamed the lower half of its bald, oval head stretched and morphed down towards its chest, as if it had once had a gaping mouth, and it was yelling for it to be returned to it. Its feet turned inwards, toes webbed, its jaunt staggered and badly balanced.

Though it had no eyes it seemed to pierce Claire with an invisible stare, and she gathered a sense from it that it wanted to project all its vengeful desires onto her.

There was another scream and this time Claire joined in, creating a harmony of anger, confusion and unadulterated terror.

She carried on screaming as she groped for her gun, her fingers suddenly feeling like rubber, her thumbs completely numb. But she willed herself into action, just like she'd had to in Racoon City, and she was finally rewarded for her strain with the feeling of cold metal against her palm.

Claire whipped the barrel of the simple 9mm round and fired without thought – for she knew thinking led to hesitation, and that had been one of the hardest lessons she'd learnt in Racoon.

She hit the creature's chest and it staggered backwards, tipping its head to the white sky and gurgling as if it were choking.

_Good, mortal, and weak…_ her instincts reasoned.

Encouraged she hit it again and this time it timbered forward, landing with a sickening crack on its chin. Its whole body withered and twitched and finally it came to a stony stillness.

Claire's ears were ringing. Before she could realise it, her legs were running too.

----

She ran until she felt fit to burst, her chest afire and her lungs aching. She stumbled over her own toes and barely managed to remain vertical so she gripped her knees with her trembling fingers and heaved in air, partly to catch her breath and partly to catch some sanity.

Now instead of trees she was surrounded by buildings, at the cusp of a long street that looking like once upon a time it would have bustled on a weekend. She caught the street name on a four story shop/apartment block – Sanders Street. Pulling the map from her rucksack Claire corresponded with it and found the information matched up; she had just finished running from Wiltse Road, where she had taken the scenic, woodland route instead of the road itself, and had landed on one of the main arteries of Silent Hill. To either side of her cutting through Sanders was Lindsey Street, and parallel to the road she was on now was Katz Street.

She absorbed the names and at the same time ignored how useless it all was when she hardly knew where to start. Her stomach growled. She felt sick but she was also hungry. A strange mixture of desires was giving her cramp. She wanted to leave this town now because nothing she had encountered so far equalled up to a rosy experience. Yet she was bound by her need to investigate Umbrella and more desperately to find Chris. The only thing she had been assured of now was that there was a strong possibility, almost a definite one, that Umbrella had been or was here, what with the faceless, limbless monsters running rampant along the roadside. Who knew what sins against humanity they had caused to create that one…

Claire checked the map again, trying desperately to push the encounter to the back of her mind, _out_ of her mind if at all possible. According to the reddy-brown ink there was a 'Happy Burger' at the far end of the street she was on. It sounded both comical and ironic. She might have smiled in better times.

Folding the paper away Claire pushed on, now understanding that if she were lucky at all, there would be no residents to Silent Hill; at best she would be entirely alone.

----

She dropped her rucksack onto a steel, ash covered table with a dead thud. The interior to Happy Burger did not promise much. Most of the furniture was rusty or broken, the walls peeling and damp. The worktop counter where Claire envisioned many a happy, processed beef burgers to have passed over was grimy and smeared with brown marks.

She left her rucksack and wandered around the small, square lot, checking dusty corners and menus, memos on the cash registers and even graffiti on the undersides of upturned tables. Clues. She needed to find something, anything, because now that she was here in Silent Hill she was running on almost empty.

But there seemed to be nothing. One table told her that 'James Luvs Heather' in messy black marker. Another post-it note informed her that 'Laura Eats Wurms.' Claire crinkled her nose. It was just like everyone had decided to abandon shop one day ten years ago and never came back.

In effect of that, there was also no food. Claire sat defeated for the time being at the table with her rucksack. She dug in with her hand and pulled out the remainder of her sandwich. Unenthusiastically she ate and as she ate she opened up the little collection of memos she had found in the desert and began to read. One newspaper cut-out caught her attention first. It was a small article, likely a filler for a middle page, and yet its title said it all.

Unrest Over Silent Hill

_Today the clairvoyants, mediums and cultists of West Coat America_ _spoke out together in alarming force. Usually a secretive and quiet segment of our society, these 'unique' minds gathered in their separate thousands alongside relevant 'paranormal hotspots' in the hope of urging the government to once and for all decimate the town of Silent Hill. It has been claimed as a whole by the groups that the town has recently upset many frequencies and channels that connect our's and the Afterlife's worlds. Of course sceptics dismissed this unified and rarely raised voice, explaining that though the coal fires of Silent Hill have of late caused a handful of dangerous explosions, no one officially occupies the town anymore and so this is of no immediate concern to anyone, certainly not to those in the Afterlife. However protests continue for as long as the government continues to dismiss the allegations. _

_This event comes off the back of the recent tragedy of Racoon_ _City, which was indeed entirely decimated under circumstances which remain strongly debated in public opinion. For one, this reporter believes it is safe to assume at least that the government will not be issuing any more destruction orders under any light advice._

_Sandra_ _Commons_

_Journalist_

Claire found the last chunk of her sandwich impossible to swallow and so she spat it back out into its wrapper whilst still locked onto the article.

They had spent about a week in the desert before they had found the book. And where they had found it looked like a place that had not been touched in years. The book itself had been blanketed in dust and grime and still it smelled of old damp. Yet it contained recent articles upon the official report on Racoon City.

Claire pushed the memos away with her hand and turned to face the floor. She felt cramp in her stomach again and a swell in her throat. She wasn't smart enough for this sort of stuff, not when she was riding solo. At least in Racoon she had had Leon across the radio at points and Sherry as an encouragement at her side. Here she had nothing but her miserable, half-insane self and no promise that she would find even a clue as to where Chris might be. The book was only confusing and quite creepy. Not that the entire town didn't make her skin crawl every time a piece of ash landed on her nose or she caught the smell of burning damp wood.

So there were coal fires burning under her feet somewhere… Disturbing though that was, at least it was a fact, she had learnt something.

_And the town's been cleaned out because of it. Theoretically no one should be living here. Perfect for Umbrella to come and set up a little camp of their own, carry out some experiments that no corner of humanity would ever allow._

Claire sat up again. A small part of her felt better for trying to figure some things out. It wasn't entirely likely that she had wasted her time and risked her life coming here. She simply had to look. Perhaps in the Woodside Apartment block, or the Brookhaven hospital. Somewhere likely to have records or signs of recent human activity.

She let out a sigh and relaxed her shoulders. What she needed was something like a list of Umbrella's hotspots, or bee's-knees names. So that was what she would look for. Now that she had an objective she could carry on.

She made to stand up when she saw the tall, half-human dark figure standing behind the service counter. Her blood ran cold and her heart quite literally stopped as she was forced back onto the chair.

He made no sound or movement, not even a gesture of breathing. He was staring right at her, only clothed from the waist down in a bloody apron, his skin across his muscle-bound arms pallid and welted. A giant sword was held loosely in his right hand, rusted and smeared in dark red. He, like the monster on the road, had no face. Instead he had a head of long, heavy metal, pyramid in shape and awkward on his neck.

As she felt herself confronted, Claire realised she could not breath. She clutched at her chest then pounded at it with her fist but no air would come in or out. Torn between the horror before her and the terror of the pain in her lungs, her sight began to waver and distort. Everything spun like it was going through a washer. The thing behind the counter still did not move yet the whole of Happy Burger seemed to grow huge and pulsing. She slid off the chair, onto her knees gasping and feeling the colour drain from her face then wash in again in blues and purples. Her lips went numb, her stomach flipped and then she felt a flash of pain as the side of her head struck the black and white tiled floor. She clawed at dust weakly, fighting the battle to stay aware. Oddly, from under the counter she caught the sight of a pair of webbed feet, standing solidly, motionless. Next to the right foot a point of dull silver glimmered. It was the last thing she noticed before everything went grey, then pitch black.


	5. America's Nastiest Highway Pt2

_**A.N: Ahhh, I forgot I had this ready to post. Only realised when I was writing chapter six... Well here it is, enjoy loyal reader.**_

**_Telaka_**

Leon was sure of at least one thing – people were after him. He was a wanted man, perhaps not in a criminal sense, but certainly in a sense that he wouldn't be so much of a free man anymore if he got caught. He didn't know who or what it was, but he felt he had raised a few eyebrows in Racoon City and had become more than just amusing to those who had been watching him. So he remained in hiding by the road, while still in charge of an eight year old orphan. 

He hardly grudged Sherry's company, in fact he treasured it for keeping him alert and sane, and he liked the girl as a sort of younger sister he had never had, but he needed her safe and away from him as soon as possible. He had but less than a handful of sure contacts, the most relevant for his needs being a young, unassuming female cousin in Vancouver. But how he was going to cross into Canada a wanted man with an illegitimate eight year old at his hip, he did not know yet.

Luckily one of the leading attributes that had gotten him into the police force in the first place had been his determined reasoning. It was a good way to stay ahead of the enemy and yourself, to remain calm and logical and open to all viable – and some less conceivable – options.

Still, Vancouver was proving a tricky one to crack on the drawing board.

They ate tuna sandwiches quietly together in an old roadside pit stop, where truckers ignored the wanted signs because more often than not the faces on those posters owed them a favour or two. Leon had allowed Sherry a soda and a peanut butter cup, because not fifteen minutes ago he had sorted out a brawl without any bloodshed and the woman behind the counter who wore more metal on her face than Leon was sure he carried, had allowed them to dine for free. 

Sherry always ate quietly and without complaint. Leon wasn't even sure she liked tuna, but it was that or a hunk of meat on a bun from an animal he wasn't sure had ever even seen a farm.

Since those involved in the brawl had left, the pit inhabited just them, metal-faced lady behind the counter and a couple of festering truck drivers, taking their breaks right to the last legitimate second. So Leon dared to talk to Sherry a little about what they were going to do.

"I'd like to get you to Vancouver. Have you ever been to Canada Sherry?"

She looked up at him slowly and shook her head. A chunk of tuna sandwich was wedged in her cheek.

"You don't have to eat that if you don't want it. Have your cup," he offered with a small smile. "I'm sure the lady'll let you have another one before we leave."

Of course, it wasn't the sandwich that was Sherry's main concern. Ever since Claire had left she had become quiet and reserved, offering Leon little banter, though clinging to him now more than ever. He knew she was terrified he would do the same thing, leave just like Claire had left. However, it was the last intention on his mind, at least until he knew she was safe somewhere.

"Anyway, I have a cousin there, her name's Julie. She's nice; she has a beagle who loves kids. And she has a good house, with a swing in the back and a spare room."

Leon could already see the doubt and mistrust in Sherry's eyes, but there would be another time to fully convince her of the plan. For now she had at least the right to know what he was trying to swing.

"She'll take care of you, until we can sort something better out. I know you don't think you have any other relatives, but maybe you have an aunt or an uncle you don't know about, or some cousins of your own. A nice girl like you, they'd be more than happy to look after you, I'm sure."

He offered her another smile, a brighter one this time, and she looked shyly back down at her half eaten sandwich.

"I miss Claire," she muttered miserably.

He sighed, and rested his hand gently on her small shoulder. 

"I know, I miss her too. But you know she wasn't upset at you, or me. She was upset because she couldn't find her brother in Racoon. It's something she has to do, she has to find him. Just like she came to find you when we thought you were lost in the desert. Claire has a gut determination to do what she has to do, and I'm betting she's determined that once she finds her brother, she'll come back and find you again."

Leon spoke quietly, assuring her as best he could, and was careful to say 'you' and not 'us'. For it was the one thing he felt he could not tell his young companion, but he had every intention that once she was safe he would go and find Claire in this Silent Hill, and whether he had to cuff her or drag her or carry her over his shoulder, he would bring her back. He had already failed one woman in Racoon City, he was not about to fail another.

o.o.o.o.o.o

_It was like someone had decided to invent a new worst nightmare for them. Now that they had survived and escaped the city and were free and alive, it was like a new horror was due, one much simpler to conduct, and perhaps more frightening than any tyrant or infested sewer way or eminent nuke attack._

_"Sherry!?" Claire screamed across the desert, her throat stinging as it was gritted with sand, though she ignored the discomfort as she yelled over and over again. Leon's voice boomed above hers however as he cupped his hands to his mouth and hollered the little girl's name with her. _

_Night had now descended with the same suddenness as falling off a kerb you didn't know was there. The cold followed suite, and soon Claire was shivering. Like the ache in her throat though she ignored it as she ran forward a little, closer towards the horizon where she had last seen Sherry holding a crook of kindling._

_"Sherry, whatever it is you think you've done, we won't be mad at you!" Claire tried, because she was remembering many a time as a child when she had run away from Chris because she thought he was mad at her. Claire's hoarse voice simply floated across the flat desert floor though, and died off in the horizon._

_She looked as hard as she could in the deepening darkness, scanning every point in the compass as she stood to one spot, using the rising moonlight to catch anything that moved or glimmered. _

_Leon did the same, his ears as wide open as his eyes as he tried to pick up on anything the little girl might be trying to do to get their attention, God-forbid she was in danger. _

_Then suddenly, from behind him, he heard Claire taking off. He spun on the spot, but she was already blazing away, streaming dust and sand behind her as she kicked her boots. He did not hesitate; he was off in a shot after her._

_"What is it?" he barked gruffly as he caught up to her heel._

_"Look!" Claire pointed with a bobbing finger, and so he followed her direction until he caught sight of it too; a lone wooden shack in the distance, set up next to a brick water-well. How they had missed it until now he was not sure, but it seemed the only explanation in this empty landscape as to where Sherry might have disappeared to all of a sudden._

_They reached it and came steadily to a halt. There was no needed to say anything directly, both survivors felt it, the unexplainable horror and desolation that hung over the shack like a second roof to its dishevelled, rotted sheet-metal top. Claire felt herself take an involuntary step backwards, like a horse shying back from water. She bumped into Leon and he rested a hand on her shoulder, overtaken by an instance of hesitation himself._

_"She must be in there," Claire finally whispered, "there's nowhere else she could have gone."_

_Leon could hear the desperation in her tone and nodded. _

_"Yeah," he agreed unwillingly, "maybe she thought it be a good idea to spend the night inside." Although neither of them believed that for a moment. If she had thought that, she would have come rushing back to tell them._

_Leon gently moved Claire to one side and stepped forward. He drew his magnum from the holster on his thigh and held it, with both hands, to his side. His shotgun was on his back, where it always rested when they were on the move. He also had a dagger on one ankle and a pistol at the other. He offered Claire an indispensable look that pleaded with her to stay. She frowned but he reasoned._

_"If she's scared she might not recognise me in the dark and try to run away. So if she comes dashing out from the back or the sides you can catch her, okay?"_

_Although she was sure he didn't want her to follow for more than just that, Claire found she could not argue. She watched Leon climb onto the shack's small porch, which creaked heavily under his boots. Then, steadily he opened the door as he pressed to the front wall. As soon as he reckoned it was safe he disappear inside._

_Suddenly the desert seemed far larger and far colder than it had been in the whole week they had spent out in it. Claire stood by idly and hugged herself. Sherry still had her jacket and Claire still had nothing better to wear than bike shorts and her short sleeved polo neck. Goosebumps freckled her arms and knees and she felt a shiver stab through her spine, making her convulse all over and her teeth knock together. She clamped her jaw shut and then took a look around. _

_There was nothing aesthetically suspicious about the shack. She supposed in wilder times it had been used as a way station, where one man would charge all the cowboys he could a fortune for the water he had managed to mine and the beef jerky he had drying in his cupboards. Not unlike the foundations of today's economy, she thought with a wiry smile, and then she bit her lip to bring her concentration back. _

_Only a creaky wind emitted from inside now, even Leon's footsteps had died away as he had disappeared into the gloom. Although already things felt unnatural and unsafe, now Claire felt unsure about having let him go in alone. She had her own knife and pistol, and she was a damn good shot, she had discovered, in the worst of times. He could do worse for a backup._

_She made for the shack's porch when a low whistle carried in the air and made her snap her head round to the left. To where the water-well sat unassumingly, its round red-brick exterior in surprisingly good shape compared to the dried out husk of the shack. She felt an inexplicable pull towards it, both unwelcome and hard to resist. It gave her a hunch and a terrible vision, of Sherry peering down with a child's curiosity, only to suddenly slip and…_

_Claire shook her head. If she had slipped in then there would be tumbleweed and kindling scattered around the well when she had likely put it down before looking. There were no scuff marks in the sandy ground either, no signs of unsettlement. _

_Claire's nostrils flared as she smelt the air around the well. She was an arm's length away from it now and unwilling to come much closer. There might still have been water down there, as something in the air tasted sweeter in her nostrils, but she was no expert and she was busy resisting the overwhelming desire to look down into the eclipse at the top of the well to really think about it._

_At the last moment, when she realised she was actually but a hair's breath away from peering over the edge, she pulled herself back, forcefully, and took her gun from her pants. _

_"Enough of this," she mumbled aggressively to her will, "I'm going in with him."_

_She spun on the spot and marched back to the shack, where she thought she could hear Leon's moving inside all of a sudden. With a heavy step she mounted the porch, and with her other foot she crashed through it, falling 10 feet straight underground._

o.o.o.o.o.o

_It hurt to move anything. At the same time she wanted to do nothing more than get straight up and get the hell out of wherever it was she had landed in, and as quickly as possible. Still, she lay for a moment, every rib on her left side pulsating in blinding agony, and she was sure those were the unfortunate bones that had taken the brunt of the fall. Her left cheek felt hot and tender. It seemed as if her shoulder had twisted behind her and her knees and ankles felt dented and swollen._

_But none of it was as damaging as she feared, when she finally began to stir tentatively. Chris had always said she was 'made of tougher stuff than her silly girly eyes let on'. As she sat up, rushing her hand to her forehead, it seemed like nothing was broken, only bruised and scraped. Nevertheless she allowed herself a low, miserable moan. Claire had been sure her days of falling through floorboards were over with Racoon City, but perhaps not._

_As she blinked her eyes opened, she realised she was in a grey lit, dug out hollow, cold and damp with a faint breeze running through the middle. Which meant there was a chance of a better way out than in, she hoped. Overall, it was about the size of the S.T.A.R.S office in the police department in Racoon City, only more rounded, and muddier. _

_Claire was filthy. Just from the landing she had managed to cover herself in dusty, dry mud which now mixed with the small handbag worth of desert sand she had managed to collect in every crevice, nook and orifice on her body._

_"Hello?" she called out tentatively, not wanting to try standing yet. "Leon? Sherry?"_

_Nothing. Her voice echoed and indeed came back to her, but no one else did. She sniffed and wiped her nose along her forearm. There was only so much more she felt she could take, before she was finally tempted to give up, shamed of the idea or not._

_As her eyes adjusted better, she began to notice what she had to take notice of. A shaft of white moonlight haloed her, falling from the hole she had created. Another small hole had been carved out of the wall to her left, made just big enough for a woman to fit through. It was where the cool breeze was coming from. It smelt sweet and promising and so Claire decided to test her feet._

_With her knees slightly stooped, she wobbled as she stood. For a moment she scanned for her balance, willed the ache in her calves to go away, and then eventually settled. Her gun had scattered to the other side of the room and she fetched it, gripping it tightly. _

_She was about to go over and investigate the hole when something else caught her eye though. Dull and flat, hidden in an ashen corner, she was surprised she had managed to see anything at all. Yet a flash of dull white had ensnared her peripheral vision and she now she was walking over to it, unheeded. _

_It was a small book, hand bound and likely inside handwritten as well. The pages stuck out unevenly from underneath the cheep brown leather. Some bits were like thick card and others thin, delicate newsprint. Corners of photographs stuck out and, Claire noticed almost as an afterthought, it smelt sweet in her hands, like fresh spring water._

_Apart from its random appearance, there did not seem anything particularly strange about the book. Claire had kept books just like it as a child, full of school work and drawings, and right at the back a small article from a local paper containing a respectful mention on her parent's death._

_She went to put it back down, but the grip in her hand around it tightened. A random thing like this in a deserted place like under a way-station in the middle of mid-America – perhaps it was important for something. In fact, she would have been willing to bet good money on that being so there and then. Except there was no one to bet with._

_Claire stuffed it in her pants. It didn't sit comfortably, but it was secure for what she had to do next._

_Before going to investigate the hole in the wall, Claire paused and strained to hear above her. No one was calling her name yet. Either Leon was making a thorough check of the shaft, or he was involved in trouble of his own. She hoped it came down to him being his thorough self._

_She turned her nose back to the hole. She was confident enough to believe her instincts; that the hole was the mouth to a tunnel which led back to the well. It was the same sweet smell she tasted now as she had sampled outside. She hesitated though. She had never been claustrophobic, or afraid of the dark, but then until Racoon City she had never believed in zombies. She held her stomach as a fleeting cramp seized through it. This was all she had though, a tunnel which hopefully scooped up and led her to the bottom of the well where she prayed she would be high enough for Leon to hear her cries._

_After five minutes, when still no one came calling after her, Claire took a deep breath which irked her ribs and poked her nose in the rim of the hole. Slowly she exhaled._

_Nothing. All was at peace in the murky darkness that lay behind the entrance to the hole, or at least, all was waiting quietly…_

_She shook her head vigorously, allowing her ponytail to fall forward over one shoulder. Nothing was waiting. Nothing but maybe a few bugs, an unpleasant spider or two, and all other manners of _natural_ science. Claire wrinkled her nose in distain but could do nothing else now but crawl in._

_It was an unpleasant experience all round. Her elbows dragged along beside her and sores began to open up across the skin. Her knees chafed and her toes kept cramping as she forced her feet down to help make faster progress. A few times she had forgotten about the lack of head room and she banged her brain-box hard against the packed mud ceiling. A few times after she had sworn and in the fury of her words inhaled and choked on dust and mud._

_Now she kept quiet, her mouth clamped in a scowl and her concentration fixed on what was ahead; that was primarily darkness though and it was beginning to disarm her focus. From her sketchy judgment even, Claire had decided the slope she had been climbing all the way so far should have led her to the bottom of the well by now. Yet it seemed to map out into nothing, and even the sweet smell of clean water had evaporated._

_She strained to turn and look back. The same darkness now bit at her heels. She looked forward again. No promise of moonlight or brick or water. Fumbling awkwardly, Claire twisted her wrist in so she could fetch her lighter from the pocket in her cutaway jeans. It was no simple task and after dropping it once and swearing colourfully, she scooped it up again in a blind grope and held on to it for dear life._

_Her hands ached with the effort of crawling, yet she took the lighter wilfully in her right hand and struck with a red raw thumb. It chanced out a couple of dud tries then with a small hiss suddenly jumped to life. The relief was as welcome as the heat off the small blue and yellow flame. Claire closed her eyes in honour of her small victory, and when she opened them again, she saw she was not alone._

o.o.o.o.o.o

_The face of the dead, condemned and tragic by misfortune, insatiably hungry and mindless. Gaping in naivety of its own ugliness. Yawning above its horror. Screaming for no purpose. Enough to kill a person with fear alone._

_But Claire didn't respond with that in mind. Not in the way she had made her habit during the earlier encounters of her Racoon escapade. Instead she tilted her head down as the grey-skinned vision before her, a decrepit humanoid with void eye sockets and gnarled teeth, perhaps a zombie or maybe something else altogether unnatural, wailed in a dog-whine, unhinging its jaw so Claire could see all the way down its gullet. If she looked._

_Instead her hand angled back to her shoulder, her fingers took control of the blade handle and she slashed flesh on the draw. The thing wheezed breathlessly, tried to rear back and crushed the top of its cranium against the hard packed mud. Black blood projected from the fine cut, spattering Claire's own fine skin. She spat as a little of it infected upon her lips, and then the real terror prevailed._

_She screamed, bracing herself against the hole, pushing with every muscle in her back as if to try and sink out of the hell. But she had swallowed its blood. In mere hours she could be just like it, screaming for no purpose, starving, mindless._

_She screamed and screamed over, blunting the knife into the mud now, the lighter fizzling out at her knees. Which were sodden. Her jeans soaked right to the thighs. But she didn't think why, she just allowed to be consumed by her own worst nightmare, enveloped beyond reason. Until Leon began shouting back._

o.o.o.o.o.o

_He had Sherry by the hand, not sure whether he was angry or whether the twitch at the corner of his mouth was trying to persuade the muscles into a smile. Where he had her firmly by the wrist, she had a tight hold on a roll of dusty sheets and a pack of liquorish and some beef jerky. He too had blankets, bottles of fresh filled water from a pump round the back end of the shack, a noisy quartet of steel pots and a gas lighter and cooker._

_The bounty was good, all he regretted was that Sherry had caused so much panic and possible grief, and out of sheer innocence. She had simply believed Leon and Claire had watched her wonder into the shack, and as the order intended, they would naturally follow._

_"I'm sorry," she muttered again, not a little distracted by the liquorish swinging between her fingers. "I just thought—"_

_"I know," Leon blocked, but gently. As soon as Claire was filled in then as far as he was concerned it would be case closed, and a little better off for it._

_They emerged back into the unwelcoming beckon of the grey sky's endless spread, the air disagreeably cool and the winds threatening to roll. Leon did not allow the gaping hole in the shack's porch to go unnoticed however, before he stepped any further. Sherry gaped, and was close with Leon to notice quickly that Claire was missing._

_"Claire?" she wavered unsurely, Leon chewing at his bottom lip as he looked upon the telltale signs of a trap, or less suspiciously, poor carpentering._

_A moment later he had drawn his shotgun and was pointing it obtrusively at the well which sat now quite suspiciously to the young man by the side of the shack. He was none too keen on the cat-like yowling singing over its brick lip._

_Sherry took his back as a shield, hands gripped tightly to his hips. Together they advanced with predatory caution, Leon's eyes suddenly much keener in the ashen dusk, waiting to pick up even the slightest inkling to shoot._

_Sherry found she was more curious than scared. The almost inferior sound of the wail was nothing like any of the tunes the undead had sung to her in Racoon. In fact, it was more like a distress call from a frightened, trapped animal, or even child…_

_Leon hovered over the lip of the well for only the second it took his ears to advice on the depth of the hole, and then he forced the nose of the shotgun down into the fresh, bitter breeze. He grunted once when Sherry pinched him, as if asking "What?" while he flicked on a flashlight, hesitating again before his ears to press tha down too._

_"I don't think it's… one of them, Leon. It sounds like, sounds like something's scared down there."_

_Leon thrust the light down. When the light came back up along with a view of what was down there, he felt himself stumble back involuntarily. Then he began to shout her name._

o.o.o.o.o.o

_Leon begun to boil off some of the water from the well in a pan from the shack that had seen better days. He took Claire's chin in a gentle grip and moved her head back and forth for inspection. She continued to hug her knees, her skin colourless and her eyes lifeless. Sherry sat by her side but did not touch her. She felt this was not a time to crowd._

_"That graze on your cheek looks quite nasty," Leon spoke softly. "So do the ones on your elbows and knees. I'm going to wash them, just in case they get infected, okay?"_

_Claire said nothing, only kept her lips pursed and her fingers locked tightly together._

_He continued to heat the water until it began to steam then dropped a rag in. With his other hand he pushed away the hair from her face and picked a few tiny stones and clumps of mud out tenderly from the wound. Claire only moved with his touch._

_"Sorry if this stings a little," he said quietly, and pressed the rag to her cheek. For a moment Claire remained stolid, her eyes frighteningly frank, then, finally, tears began to well in her glassy blue gaze. Leon's shoulders sagged, partly with relief and partly with sorrow._

_He finished cleaning the wound while a flow of tears spilled down her cheeks, her lips parting slightly so they could quiver._

_"I thought I could do this," she husked, her voice barely with her anymore. "I thought after that damn city I could do anything. But it keeps getting worse, and now I don't know whether I'm imagining it, or if there's just no escaping from what Umbrella's started."_

_Leon took a gauze strip from the first-aid kit and some micropore tape. He sprayed the gauze with antiseptic and slowly pressed it to her cheek. She hardly so much as winced, still a great distance holding in her eyes. So he taped the pad on and then leaned back to inspect his work._

_"If it's any consolation Claire, I don't think you're making anything up."_

_"Me neither," Sherry offered quietly as she chewed some liquorish._

_For a moment the three sat together around the fire in silence, absorbing the event each in their own way. Leon had to reason that even out in the middle of nowhere, with Racoon completely decimated, things were not safe. Umbrella was scattered everywhere, ready to haunt them at any moment, to attack without warning as he assumed they had Claire. _

_And now there was a new name in the mix, a new town that Leon had never heard of – Silent Hill. He had already made up his mind to investigate it from a safe distance, like over the internet, but he feared he had an idea what Claire was making of it all. Chris weighed heavier on her mind more than ever, and he could not deny the possibility that one day he would wake up and find she was gone to take up the lead, perhaps gone forever, and too scared to leave a note in case he followed and she got him and Sherry more involved in her own private mess._

_With a sigh Leon came out of his thoughts and noticed Claire's eyes were heavy. If anyone was still counting then it was her turn for first night watch, but hell he was keeping tabs anymore so it might as well be his._

_"Claire," he said quietly and she turned to him, the best response she had given to anything since she had been dragged out of the well. "Why don't you go to sleep? I can keep watch, I'm wide awake."_

_He smiled when she and Sherry yawned in unison._

_"I'll take that as a yes," he whispered as Claire settled carefully on her right side, almost asleep before her head hit the dust._

_Leon arranged one of the thin rugs he had salvaged from the shack around her, and slipped another folded one under her head as a pillow, then he dropped one playfully over Sherry's head, who was still sitting up._

_"Are we going to that Silent Hill?" she asked cautiously, and above her Leon shook his head._

_"No. No need. Where we _need_ to go is somewhere safe to rest and think properly. Maybe to Claire's brother's house if she can get us there."_

_Sherry nodded. Apparently that was all she wanted to hear, as she quickly drifted off to sleep with Claire._


End file.
